Might as Well Be Dead

With a couple of hours to go before company was expected, I would have liked to take a trip up to 52nd Street and help Orrie paw through the cartons, but I had been instructed to stay put, and it was just as well. There were phone calls-one from Lon Cohen, one from our client in Omaha, and one from Purley Stebbins, wanting to know if we had got a line on Johnny Keems’s movements and contacts Wednesday evening. I told him no and he was skeptical. When the doorbell rang a little after five o’clock I expected to find Purley on the stoop, come to do a little snarling, but it was a stranger-a tall, slim, narrow-shouldered young man, looking very grim. When I opened the door he was going to push right in, but I was wider and heavier than he was. He announced aggressively, “I want to see Archie Goodwin.”

“You are.”

“I are what?”

“Seeing Archie Goodwin. Who am I seeing?”

“Oh, a wise guy.”

We were off to a bad start, but we got it straightened out that he meant that I was a wise guy, not that I was seeing one; and after I had been informed that his name was William Lesser and he was a friend of Delia Brandt I let him in and took him to the office. When I offered him a chair he ignored it.

“You saw Miss Brandt last night,” he said, daring me to try to crawl out of it.

“Right,” I confessed.

“About a piece about Molloy for some magazine.”

“Right.”

“I want to know what she told you about her and Molloy.”

I swiveled the chair at my desk and sat. “Not standing up,” I told him. “It would take too long. And besides, I’d want-”

“Did she mention me?”

“Not that I remember. I’d want some kind of a reason. You don’t look like a city detective. Are you her brother or uncle or lawyer or what?”

He had his fists on his hips. “If I was her brother my name wouldn’t be Lesser, would it? I’m a friend of hers. I’m going to marry her.”

I raised the brows. “Then you’re off on the wrong foot, brother. A happy marriage must be based on mutual trust and understanding, so they say. Don’t ask me what she told me about her and Molloy, ask her.”

“I don’t have to ask her. She told me.”

“I see. If that’s how it is you’d better sit down. When are you going to be married?”